I stand by the pond,eating woolly snow from my mitten.The ice has thawed, and frozen again, butI can still see the cracks.

I don’t know where the pond skaters gowhen water freezes:there’s no water here to keep them up,scooting along, no fishpushing up against the top of the waterlike the lid on a pot.

The house smells of good things.

I pull my boots off andleave them dripping on the rugin the hall. Nannydoesn’t mind about drips; she’llmop them up, ‘cause a little water never hurt anything.’

The table has a crack that runs across it.I help her pull it wideso we can drop leaves inside,and pretend the table is bigger,and there are always so many people here for dinner-like the old days, whenthere weren’t any missing unclesor Grandads.

Potatoes don’t have eyes any moreafter Nanny is through with them.They lie flat, on the side of my plate,beached in gravy.

She glares down thelength of the table, passing the rolls,and almost-argumentsgo out like candles.

Ideology has no place hereonly butter,pepper.

Mary McDonough, University of Strathclyde. Mary wrote her first poem at age 7, after ensuring (or so she thought) that her youngest brother’s adoption proceeded smoothly, and just prior to performing (unsuccessful) open-heart surgery on a snapping turtle crushed by the postman’s jeep;. Mary is a PhD candidate at Strathclyde.